


Crow Feathered Hair

by Uniasus



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Druids, Gen, Internal Monologue, Magic Revealed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 20:12:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5979664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't like these visions he gets, these moments in time where Morgana and Merlin seem separate from the rest of the world or the images of Merlin in the woods with contented smile the manservant has never worn in Camelot. He doesn't like them at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crow Feathered Hair

When he first met Merlin, he stuck out because of his attitude and lack of knowledge.

To not know he was King Uther’s son mean the idiot was both new to Camelot and from far away. That’s not what caught Arthur’s attention though. It was his words and actions. 

Or at least, so he had assumed at the time.

* * *

He noticed it again during Merlin’s second year of service, the unmistakable sense that the manservant was out of place.

Arthur had no idea what triggered it. Merlin was just standing there against the wall, talking to Gwen, but Morgana was a few steps in front of them both in a hallway talking to another lady.

Maybe it was the way the light came in from the window – it rested on both Morgana and Merlin, turning their black hair into shiny crow feathers and giving their eyes a bright, fierce look reminiscent of wolves.

In that flash of a second, Arthur had two thoughts. One was that they belonged together – not as in a couple but as in family. The second was that they certainly didn’t seem to belong to Camelot either.

The thoughts flew away as quickly as they came.

* * *

The druids weren’t what Arthur expected them to be. Granted, his interactions with them previously been brief and in the midst of chaos. This was a peaceful approach, and the fact that the situation stayed as peaceful as it started was startling. As was the way in which they lived.

A cave, filled with thin pieces of clothes and only a small scattering of cooking supplies. Dirty faces, thin faces, haunted faces. He had wanted to leave as soon as possible and so turned on his heel once the cup was in his hand.

Merlin didn’t follow him out, not right away, and Arthur turned to shout at him to hurry up. Except something stuffed the words back into his mouth. The manservant was simply standing there, looking at the Druid leader, and looked so natural doing so.

Merlin didn’t look like the Druids. Not really. Despite his low status in Camelot, he was still better dressed and better fed then anyone in the cave. And yet – the look in their eyes wasn’t much different. 

Arthur had a sudden feeling that Merlin belonged here. Here, hiding in a cave instead of on a thin cot in a room off of the physician’s quarters. His mind was full of images of Merlin in a worn blue gray cloak in the woods. Head tilted back to smile at the sun. Crouched beside a stream. Stroking the back of a six point stag. 

In all of them, Merlin was smiling, eyes bright with mirth and at peace with the world and with himself.

It struck him he had never seen Merlin like that in Camelot. Oh, he smiled and told jokes and despite his grumbling never actively tried to change his position in life. But there were times, small moments…

It was only now, in the cave, did Arthur realize that Merlin had just been doing his best to make an imperfect situation perfect. What caused the discordance, Arthur had no idea. But a Merlin at peace, happy, without that slight slouch to his shoulders – he had never seen that. Had never realized Merlin wasn’t even happy at all until the images of him in a Druid cloak materialized in the prince's head.

There was no reason for that. Merlin wasn’t a Druid. He didn’t wear cloaks. He complained about staying outside sometimes when they went hunting.

And yet.

Arthur had the strange desire to tell Merlin to stay here, to be happy in a way he couldn’t be at Camelot.

Merlin nodded at the Druids before turning and slipping around Arthur back into the sunlight.

* * *

The next time Arthur had a strange vision of an alternate Merlin, Mordred was involved. Arthur looked back over his horse at the knight and manservant, a recently disenchanted Guinevere sighing at the sight of the citadel, and saw not a young knight in mail and a servant in a threadbare shirt but rather a pair of men laughing with each other while sitting on a hill top.

Both were wearing Druid cloaks and while they laughed and gestured as if they were talking, their mouths didn’t move. They looked like brothers, five years apart if that, with matching crow feather hair and wolf eyes.

With a jolt, he remembered thinking the same thing almost seven years ago about Merlin and Morgana.

He couldn’t tell what upset him more. The idea of Merlin and Mordred getting along so well while here they were often on edge around each other. Or the thought that what had made Morgana stand out in such a way had been magic - and what did that mean if these two men made him recall her?

* * *

The answer Merlin gave him about identifying a holy place shocked him. Arthur had expected something logical – like Gaius having told him the cave was sacred or making a connection between priestesses of the Old Religion and the priests of the new one.

What he had said instead spoke of feelings, of an awareness that Arthur lacked. Thinking about it, Arthur wasn’t entirely surprised. Since day one Merlin had seemed to be able to predict things. He would move before others, harbored suspicions that turned true, gave advice that in hindsight Arthur knew he should have taken. 

Funny feelings, Arthur called them, in his typical way of bringing humor to their relationship. Internally, Arthur called them scary feelings. The idea that Merlin could sense things, know things, no one else did often made the hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck stand on end.

It wasn’t sorcery, but it wasn’t normal either. It wasn’t evil, nor was it good.

But how Merlin described the feel of the woods around them, it sounded wondrous. Glorious. Arthur felt a little jealous he couldn’t feel such a sensation, because if Merlin experienced the world around them so thoroughly, understood how he related to the world and his place in it, how could that be anything other than beautiful?

No wonder Merlin enjoyed going into the woods to gather herbs for Gaius, or went on hunts though he hated it, or once in a while would look up at the citadel walls and glare. If Merlin was at peace in the wild – 

His mind filled with old forgotten images of Merlin in a Druid cloak and at peace in the woods, and Arthur thought he finally understood why Merlin seemed to belong in a cave instead of a city.

The Druids didn’t all have magic. Most of them did, yes, but they were a people, a culture like any other. Some didn’t have the gift. But those who didn’t, Arthur wouldn’t be surprised if they still felt something in the air. If they were like Merlin.

And that brought up many more thoughts. In another world, would Merlin had left Ealdor not for Camelot but for a Druid camp? Would he relax in sun dappled clearings with brothers and sisters of mind if not blood? Would Morgana had done the same, found peace in the Darkling Woods and not turn on the kingdom if she had been able to join the Druids? Would Mordred be there too, bumping Merlin’s shoulder in laughter while Morgana rolled her eyes at the pair of men?

Arthur ached for such scenes. For the peace he saw in their eyes, for the pain and suffering such a world lacked. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t in them, that in such a world he probably would never had met loyal Merlin or dedicated Mordred. It felt like such a better life then what they had now. 

Morgana waging a war. Mordred dying. Merlin looking at Arthur with conflicted eyes, haunted and pained by thoughts Arthur suspected his friend would never share because it was related to this otherness of him Arthur couldn’t touch.

Had Uther been wrong? Were the Druids right to fight against Arthur?

If he brought magic back to Camelot, could Merlin find the peace Arthur had only seen in his imaginary version of the manservant?

When Merlin told Arthur, quite firmly, that magic didn’t belong in Camelot, Arthur felt a small part of him shrink and snuff out. He felt happiness disappear into smoke, both in his heart and in Merlin’s eyes.

He wished he knew the answer to all the whys that haunted him that night.

* * *

When Mordred escaped, using magic to rattle the door off its hinges so it could explode outward, he knew.

Camelot, Camelot as it was today, was wrong. It had turned Morgana against him. It had turned Mordred against him.

And when Merlin said he wasn’t going to ride with Arthur into battle, he wondered if it had finally turned Merlin against him too.

* * *

When Merlin confessed, crying and desperate, it was Arthur who turned against him.

Merlin cringed away even as he pleaded to be understood, but Arthur was having none of it. A sorcerer. A friend who had lied for years. Arthur sent him away, even though Merlin didn’t obey.

It was instinctual; drawn from the stories of the Purge, his father’s lectures, Morgana’s attacks, and the other magical plots that had threatened Camelot. And it was only after his mind calmed, seeing Gaius’s resolute acceptance of Merlin, did Arthur realize just how deep the wrongness of Camelot ran.

It hadn’t simply turned Morgana and Mordred against him, it had turned him against them too. A two way road, full of fear and hatred so strong that neither party had been able to look beyond their overwhelming negative feelings. They had built them up, until Camelot pursed magic which pursed Camelot which slowly destroyed the people of the land.

In hindsight, so many of Merlin’s moments of wisdoms made more sense now, even if some of what he had said Arthur still didn’t understand. Whether or not Merlin had purposely pushed Arthur onto the path he now stood on, the sorcerer had molded Arthur into the king he was. Merlin’s advice had pushed him towards one decision or another, and it was his faith in a brighter future that had Arthur pushing himself to meet such expectations.

And here he was, pushing his friend away, just as he finally understood Merlin in his entirety, just as he realized why Merlin’s happiness had been out of reach.

He realized this was the root of the issue. Why Merlin never said anything. Why Mordred and Morgana hadn’t said anything. It made him ashamed.

What he had learned those two days of travel to the lake about Merlin, he didn’t actually learn. He knew them already. Instead, Arthur learned to look beyond the magic to the man underneath. He wished it was a skill he developed years earlier. That his father could have developed too if Morgana had had the courage to spill her secrets.

There was something in the way Merlin stood on the hill in the drizzle having just blasted men back, or crouched over burning wood to make shapes in the sparks, that made Arthur think back on that better world he had imagined. Openly using magic changed something inside of Merlin, it made him shifty and had him peaking at Arthur out of the side of his eye, but it also made him smile and seem more real. No longer hiding, no longer pretending, Merlin was free to be who he was even if Arthur and him were both coming to terms with that revelation and what it meant for them.

Arthur didn’t regret it though. Because he had a new image of Merlin in his head now. Not in a Druid cloak in the woods, but on the lawn in Camelot, dressed as he always was, with a sword in his hand, a smile on his face, and glow in his eyes as Gwaine advanced for a spar.

A happy, peaceful, Merlin who felt he belonged in the walls of Camelot.

That’s what Arthur wanted.

And once he was healed, that was what he would achieve.


End file.
